


Of Dragon-helms and Derring-do

by Cherepashka



Series: It's the New World, Darling-A 19th-20th Century AU [20]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, And Azaghâl the long-suffering policeman, Dragon-helm of Dor-lomin, Friendship, Gen, Gift Giving, Humor, Silly college shenanigans, Silly post-college shenanigans, Various Finwëans getting arrested for various misdeeds, alcohol consumption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-16 16:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19322329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherepashka/pseuds/Cherepashka
Summary: The origins of a certain notorious piece of headgear in the Gates family saga.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avantegarda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avantegarda/gifts).



> Spawned by [this tumblr post](https://thegatesfamilyfiles.tumblr.com/post/185526992438/what-finwes-grandchildren-have-been-arrested-for). avantegarda very kindly let me Write The Thing.

“Sorry, _why_ are we doing this again?” Maedhros asked.

Erestor looked affronted. “To prove we are true Oxonians, of course! To declare ourselves worthy of the intellectual traditions of which we are the inheritors! To test our mettle and not be found wanting!” He paused. “And to stick it to the chumps from Balliol, because their pranks are rubbish.”

Beside him, Fingon nodded in sage agreement, which Maedhros thought a bit presumptuous given that Fingon was not due to start at Oxford until next term, would be joining Magdalen rather than Trinity in any case, and had only come up for a few days to ‘get a taste of university life’ — by which he seemed to mean mostly ‘the contents of Erestor’s liquor cabinet’. Maedhros could hardly fault him for that last bit, though; Erestor’s collection had been behind the vast majority of his own most memorable Oxford experiences.

“Fine, yes, alright, but what will we do with it once we’ve got it?”

Erestor bestowed upon him the indulgent look of one who has just explained a very simple sum to a very small child with very little success, but who is willing to repeat the explanation as many times as it takes and demonstrate by counting on fingers if necessary. “Put it on the statue of the Earl of Pembroke in front of the Bod, of course.” 

That, Maedhros thought, couldn’t possibly be as reasonable as it sounded, but whatever had been in the drink Erestor had mixed for him had been very strong; it was now generating a buzzing sensation inside his skull that intensified every time he attempted to follow a chain of logic. Like bees: a cloud of telepathic bees with their stingers out for syllogisms. It had probably been a mistake to drink the stuff — drinking an experimental Erestor concoction almost always was — but Fingon had had one, and Maedhros considered it his elder-cousinly duty to keep up so that Fingon would not have to suffer the aftereffects alone. 

“What _did_ you put in here, anyhow?” he asked Erestor, tilting his glass at him. “This isn’t just whiskey.” For one thing, it had a sharp herbal taste and burned even more than whiskey usually did going down; for another, it was chartreuse.

“Ah!” Erestor said. “Behold, my secret ingredient!” He withdrew from his cabinet a bottle with some sort of heraldic creature on the label, too ornate for Maedhros to identify until he saw the name.

“What’s ‘Green Dragon’?”

“Absinthe, mostly. With some sort of chilli-pepper infusion, I believe. Good, isn’t it?”

Maedhros considered pouring out the rest of his glass, but concluded it would be a futile endeavour given that there was hardly more than a swallow or two left in it anyway. Besides, there’d been something else he wanted to ask before the absinthe-bees had drowned it out. “And...” He chased the thought valiantly through the crescendoing swarm. “Oh, yes. Why does it have to be a policeman’s helmet, in particular?” 

“How else,” said Erestor, gesturing grandly and rather recklessly with his own drink, “are we to establish that we are men of enterprise and derring-do, of valour and cunning dexterity — whoops —” A generous wave of liquor leapt from his glass to douse Maedhros’s front. 

“I thought the point was for no one to know it was us,” Maedhros pointed out, blotting in vain at his waistcoat. The bees seemed to do a sort of collective swoop toward the base of his skull, and he resigned himself to the raging headache into which they would surely transform within a few hours. “So they won’t know whose enterprise and derring-do and valour and all that to credit.”

Erestor looked crestfallen only for a moment. “Ah, but _we’ll_ know. It will be a memory we shall cherish to our graves, just we three, we happy three, we band of brothers —”

“Cousins,” Maedhros corrected, automatically. “And the chap who happened to have the rooms next to mine our first year.” Erestor gave him a wounded look.

“Anyway it’s _tradition_ ,” Fingon put in, enunciating each consonant with the meticulous care of the utterly pissed. “Gates family tradition.”

“My father never stole any helmets,” Maedhros protested. Fëanor had had more than one brush with the law, but they tended to be less of the ‘general drunken mayhem’ variety and more of the ‘We were summoned to investigate a series of sudden explosions and — good heavens, what is that _smell_?’ variety.

“No, but mine did,” Fingon informed him serenely. “ _And_ our Granddad.” 

“He never! Were bobbies even wearing helmets yet, back when Granddad was at Oxford?” 

“Of course they were,” Erestor said dismissively. “The very first bobby sprung helmeted from the womb.” 

Maedhros considered that for a second, and winced. 

“Helmet all ready for you to pop off and purloin.” Erestor transferred his drink to his other hand so he could clap Maedhros heartily on the shoulder, and yes, there, that was the bit that had tripped Maedhros up the first time around before it had been drowned out by intracranial bees. 

“Right, sorry — why must it be _me_?” 

“Because whoever does it is going to have to leg it pretty quick. And you’re, you know” — he waved his drink again in a gesture that encompassed Maedhros’ bemused expression, lanky frame, and trouser legs still hanging an inch short despite the tailor’s best efforts — “leggy.” 

“But we’ll be right there with you,” Fingon reassured him, in a manner clearly meant to be encouraging. “I’ll have the Eagle ready to go just round the corner. And up the road a bit. A safe distance away.” The Eagle was Fingon’s rusty penny-farthing bicycle, christened for the soaring height at which it positioned its rider, whose handlebars and rear axle he had modified to support any passenger foolish enough to imperil life and limb for a ride. “Just far enough that we don’t look like accop– acclomp– helpers,” Fingon added. He hiccuped once and subsided. 

Maedhros thought about mentioning the lecture he’d recently attended on the enactment and ramifications of the Accessories and Abettors Act of 1861, but decided the information would be of little use to someone too intoxicated to even manage the word ‘accomplice’. He did, however, make a mental note that the lecturer had perhaps been overoptimistic in his assessment of the Act’s deterrent effects. 

Erestor took advantage of his distraction to pry away his empty glass, which he deftly refilled with a combination of liquors that Maedhros was fairly sure included more of that alarming Green Dragon stuff. “Pick one with a beard,” he advised solicitously, handing the glass back. “They never get their chin straps to sit properly over a beard; it’ll be easier to pull off. Now come on, bottoms up!” 

§

A short while later Maedhros found himself occupying a precarious perch on the Eagle’s rear axle, one hand maintaining a death grip on the cycle’s rust-spotted frame and a dented constable’s helmet dangling by its chinstrap from the other. “Can’t you go any faster?”

“No, I can’t!” Fingon moaned, already pedaling hard. The bicycle clanked and wobbled, tilting dangerously as the front wheel hit a loose cobblestone. “If I go any faster I shall be sick.”

“And whose fault is that?” 

“Erestor’s?” Fingon suggested, making what Maedhros had to concede was a valid point. Erestor had, after all, supplied all of their liquid courage for this venture, and then proceeded to get himself left behind in the chase by utterly botching what was supposed to be a graceful flying leap onto the Eagle’s handlebars. On the whole, though, Maedhros thought that was probably for the best; the bicycle was struggling enough without an extra passenger on its steering mechanism.

He risked a backward glance. “He’s gaining on us! How the blazes is he _gaining_ on us?”

Behind them, the helmetless constable, who per Erestor’s advice sported a magnificent beard, was in what looked like the very epitome of hot pursuit. Though he was significantly shorter than either of them, even Fingon, his stubby legs had proved to be capable of remarkably rapid movement, aided as they were by righteous ire and furiously pumping arms. Maedhros had found himself hard pressed to reach the relative safety of the getaway cycle — a safety diminishing by the second as the Eagle dipped and veered. 

“Hurry!” he urged.

“Stop!” shouted the constable. 

Addled by absinthe, Fingon attempted to do both at once, swerved violently, and steered them straight into a pyramid of empty crates left at the side of the road by a careless greengrocer.

Once the ringing in his ears subsided, Maedhros was vaguely impressed to find himself still clutching the battered helmet.

“Aha, Fingon,” he mumbled. “I’ve got it.”

“And _I’ve_ got _you_ ,” growled a gravelly, wrathful voice from somewhere above him.

 _Oh, bloody hell._ Maedhros squinted up through splintered crate slats and a sort of haze that had come over his vision, and made out a blurry blue uniform and bushy brown beard. “I don’t suppose it’d help at this point to, er, repatriate this to its rightful owner, would it?” he ventured, lifting the helmet up a few inches.

“Too late for that, sonny boy. You’ll go before the magistrate in the morning, you will, and in the meantime I’ve got a nice cell waiting for the both of you. Get up.” Maedhros wondered, as the helmet was yanked none too gently from his hand, whether all members of the police force were trained to address miscreants as ‘sonny boy’; the constable didn’t look more than a few years older than he was, but he spoke in tones Maedhros had only ever heard from Grandfather Mahtan in his sterner moods. 

“I’ve got about a thousand splinters,” came Fingon’s voice from the indistinct darkness to his left. “And possibly some broken ribs.”

“Should’ve thought about that before you tried to abscond with stolen property on a velocipede, shouldn’t you?” was the constable’s unsympathetic response. “So long as you can walk, you’re coming with me.”

Fingon’s ribs, it turned out, weren’t broken, merely bruised, and Maedhros discovered when he attempted to rise that he had wrenched his wrist rather badly; but as they could both walk, they were left with no choice but to proceed to the station at Kemp Hall with the constable chivvying them from behind.

The walk did a good deal to sober him up, and both his head and his wrist were aching fiercely by the time they reached the station. His conscience stung more fiercely yet. It was one thing to know that students got arrested for harmless, or even moderately dangerous, pranks all the time, and came out none the worse for wear except for the fines, and quite another to be the arrestee in question. What if he were rusticated? Or permanently sent down? He might even be gaoled, or worse — his criminal law lecturer had discussed the abolishment of punishments such as severing a hand for theft, but the magistrate might well decide to make an exception in his case... he’d fail his exams if they cut off his hand! He couldn’t possibly write them all left-handed, not on such short notice.

Worse than the prospect of punishment and exam failure was the thought of his parents’ disappointment. His mother would probably get over it in time, but Fëanor had had such high hopes when his eldest son had started at Oxford....

And worst of all was Fingon trailing behind him, poised to spend the night in a cell in Kemp Hall instead of the cot made up for him in Maedhros’ room, because his idiot of an older cousin, who ought to have been looking out for him during what was supposed to be an educational visit, had instead enticed him into reckless lawbreaking. 

“I’m sorry for getting you into this, Fin,” he murmured as the constable ushered them into the cell, slammed the door behind them, and departed to complete whatever constabulary paperwork he needed to complete. The cell was bare but for two creaky cots, a bucket, and a pronounced odour of alcohol and piss. 

“Sorry? Are you mad? This is brilliant!” Fingon whispered back. Maedhros gaped at him. “I’ve never been properly arrested before. Aredhel will _have_ to admit I’m the most dashing brother now. I’m only sorry I crashed the cycle. Poor old Eagle.”

“But — but we’re in gaol!” Maedhros sputtered. “We could be convicted for theft!”

“I should think technically only _you_ could be convicted for theft, since _I_ did not in fact do any actual thieving.”

“Think again,” said Maedhros grimly. “Under the Accessories and Abettors Act of 1861 —”

“Explain it to me tomorrow,” Fingon interrupted, patting him comfortingly on the shoulder. “Or better yet, explain to the magistrate why neither of us should be convicted of anything. That is why you chose the law course, isn’t it?” He yawned, then winced. “In the meantime I think I’ll get some sleep. My ribs are actually hurting rather a lot, now I think about it, and it must be coming on two in the morning.”

He spread himself out on the slightly less creaky of the two cots and within thirty seconds was snoring lightly, while Maedhros, who had always envied his cousin’s ability to fall asleep anytime and anywhere, perched on the edge of the other cot and stared at his hands. He was morosely comparing the size of his swollen wrist to his uninjured one when the cell door clanked open. 

“Oi, ginger,” said the constable, “what are your names? Got to have them for the book. And no funny business now, don’t go giving me false ones, it’ll be easy enough to find you out by asking your tutors.”

“How’d you know we’re students?” Maedhros asked, startled. Or almost-students, in Fingon’s case. The constable snorted.

“It’s obvious enough you’re not from the town.”

Maedhros sighed. “Gates. Maedhros Gates. And he’s Gates as well, Fingon Gates.”

“Brothers, eh?”

“Cousins. I’ve got plenty of brothers as it is.”

“Are they at the college as well?” The constable sounded distinctly apprehensive. 

“Boarding school — well, two of them are. The next oldest after me is studying music in Vienna. And the youngest three are still at home.”

“You’re right, you do have an absurd number of brothers. Better hope none of them turn up here. What were you planning on doing with it, anyhow?”

“What?”

The constable shook his head. “Bloody students, don’t they teach you anything? My helmet — what were you trying to nick it for? Thought it’d make a good pisspot or some such?”

“We were going to put it on the statue of Pembroke,” Maedhros admitted, shamefaced. “In front of the Bod.”

He thought he might have seen the constable’s beard twitch, just the faintest movement, but all he said was, “Were you now.” Then the door slammed shut again, and all Maedhros heard after that was the lock, clanking with terrible finality into place, and Fingon’s gentle snores from the other side of the cell.

§

They emerged from the courthouse door the next day, filled in Fingon’s case with the fizzy exuberance of newly regained freedom and, in Maedhros’, exhaustion and abject relief, to find Erestor waiting for them.

“That,” he announced, as they started the walk back to the college, “was brilliant. I’ve never seen anyone argue with such — such pathos! And eloquence! You nearly had _me_ in tears, and you had the magistrate in the palm of your hand! Is that what they teach in the law courses? I’m starting to think I made a mistake, going with classics.”

“Turned up to watch, did you?” Maedhros retorted acidly. He still had a lingering headache from the drinks and the cycle crash. “Funny, I didn’t see you standing up to admit your own part in it, or coming to find us last night.”

“Ah. I’m sorry about that, truly and heartily. Last I saw of you, you were tearing down the street with the peeler tearing after you. I assumed you’d gotten away until someone said this morning they’d seen a constable escorting a tall ginger and little bloke into the station house.”

“I’m not that little,” Fingon protested. 

“I did go back and find the cycle, though.”

Fingon’s indignation vanished in favour of a beaming smile. “You did? Is it terribly damaged?” 

“It’s a bit banged up, but I think we’ll be able to get the spokes straightened out. And you got off, didn’t you, with nothing but a reprimand! So no harm done, eh?”

Fingon clapped him on the shoulder. “No harm at all.”

Maedhros merely gave Erestor a look, one eyebrow raised pointedly, to make clear that while rustications and gaol terms and severing of body parts had not come to pass, they would still be having words. Dragging Maedhros himself into ill-considered escapades was wholly forgivable; it was, in fact, the foundation of their friendship. Dragging Fingon into them was another matter entirely. 

The force of his glare was, unfortunately, somewhat diminished by Fingon remarking, with undisguised pride, “Do you know, I think that was my first taste of absinthe, my first university prank, _and_ my first arrest, all in one night!”

“Was it?” Erestor cried, delighted. “You’ve made quite a good start, then, but we’ll have to get you properly caught up next term. By the by, Maedhros, did you know your right wrist is about double the circumference of your left? It’s gone quite a lovely shade of purple, too; you might want to get something for that.”

Just when he’d almost managed to distract himself from the pain. “Thanks, actually, I hadn’t noticed.” 

Erestor led them past the Radcliffe Camera, ignoring Maedhros’ sarcasm with the same insouciance he gave Maedhros’ frequent admonitions that he needn’t buy _every single_ new type of alcohol he read about. “And you’re both in desperate need of a change of clothes. It’s a shame you didn’t manage to keep hold of the helmet, though. It would have looked absolutely spiffing on old Pembroke —”

He broke off, staring open-mouthed through the archway into the Bodleian courtyard. At the other end of the courtyard stood the statue of the Earl of Pembroke — which was, in fact, sporting a familiar, dented constable’s helmet. 

Maedhros followed his gaze and suppressed a groan.

Beneath the helmet sat a shiny copper-red wig.


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s been over an hour,” Maedhros said worriedly, looking up from the treatise on trusts and estates he was attempting to memorise. “Do you think I ought to go look for him?”

Fingon paused his own work, setting aside the mathematical theorem he’d been deriving, and frowned. “Celegorm? I’m sure he’s fine, he can take care of himself. And anyway we left him with those rugby lads. They’ll keep an eye on him.”

“That’s what has me worried. They were Balliol rugby lads.” 

One of those very same Balliol rugby lads chose that moment to barge into the little common room where they were working. “Oi, Gates!”

“What is it?”

“Your brother sent me to find you to come get him.”

Maedhros’ blood ran cold. “Why, what happened? Is he in trouble? Is he hurt?”

The rugby lad snorted. “He’s perfectly fine, he’s only over at the police station.”

Maedhros felt his shoulders sag in relief even as he shot Fingon a pointed look, then turned back to the rugby lad. “What for?”

“Challenged Debenham to race logs down the river. Said it was something he used to do as a kid in the country.”

For Celegorm, that honestly sounded comparatively tame, and surely not arrest-worthy. “And?”

“Debenham said he’d do it, but only if they both had their own logs out. If you know what I mean.” 

Maedhros stared. “It’s _November_. Never mind, that wouldn’t stop my brother; go on.” 

“Constable caught them under a footbridge, started going on about public indecency and all that rot.” 

He heaved a sigh. “All right, I’ll go.”

“Shall I come?” Fingon asked. He was regarding Maedhros with amusement, the smile playing about his lips suggesting he was only barely holding back laughter.

Maedhros shook his head, though for himself he would have preferred Fingon’s company. “No point both of us losing out on studying, and failing our exams thanks to my buffoon of a brother.”

Fingon rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to fail your exams, at least not if your marks for the past six terms are anything to go by. In fact, I’ll eat my hat if you don’t get a first.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Maedhros muttered darkly, and grabbed his coat. 

He had to stop by the river to pick up Celegorm’s clothes from the remaining rugby players, and he was in something of a temper by the time he arrived at the Kemp Hall station, exasperation with his brother warring with looming dread for his exams, and simmering underneath it all the carefully suppressed memory of the night he’d spent in the station the previous year. He shoved through the door with slightly more force than necessary.

“I’m here for — oh.” Maedhros stopped short at the sight of the constable entering arrest notes in the book at the desk. 

The very familiar constable who was wearing a slightly dented helmet and a thick brown beard. 

The very familiar constable with a dented helmet and thick brown beard who, upon seeing Maedhros, said in Saharan tones: “You again?”

Maedhros felt his face heat with mortification.

“I’m just here to collect” — he gestured toward the cell behind the desk, where Celegorm and a young man who must have been Debenham sat, clad only in towels that did very little to render them decent — “the blond one.” 

Debenham, as far as Maedhros was concerned, could fend for himself if he was foolish enough not only to take a dare of Celegorm’s but to issue one of his own in return.

“Another of your cousins, is he?”

“No, this one’s a brother,” he said, ignoring the frantic cutting-off gestures Celegorm was making from the cell. “But not a student here. Yet.”

“Brother, eh, Mr. Gates? Odd, that, since he gave his name as Dunnington Wimblecock.”

Maedhros directed a stony look at Celegorm, who gave up trying to signal him and slumped back against the cell wall. “It’s Celegorm Gates. Yes, with a ‘c’.”

“Well, he can go with you if you’ve got clothes for him. That’s one off my hands. You’ll just need to sign here.”

“Right. Thank you.”

Within a few minutes Maedhros was steering his brother, now wearing his rumpled clothes and a smile too roguish to be properly contrite, firmly toward the door. Something made him pause with one hand on the handle, and turn back. “What’s your name, constable, if I may ask?”

“Broadbeam,” replied the constable, sounding a bit surprised at the question, though his face was impassive. “Constable Azaghâl Broadbeam.”

Maedhros regarded him thoughtfully. “The wig was a nice touch, Constable Broadbeam.”

Now the constable did look distinctly surprised, and — almost flattered, perhaps? “Liked that, did you?”

The corner of Maedhros’ mouth quirked up. “Liked it? Not at the time, no. Deserved it? Absolutely.”

Broadbeam chuckled. “Try and keep young Mr. Gates out of trouble, will you?” 

“I shall do my best, but if I’m honest I must advise against getting your hopes up.” 

Celegorm eyed him with avid interest as they passed through the door. “What was that about? With the wig and all?” 

“Nothing that concerns you, _Dunnington_. Come on, I’ve lost more than an hour studying thanks to this farce.” And whatever he saw in Maedhros’ face made Celegorm shut up and follow without complaint.

§

The incident did not, however, prevent Celegorm from getting himself arrested four more times during his fortnight-long visit: twice again with the Balliol rugby team, once with a regatta crew, and once entirely on his own initiative. Privately Maedhros suspected it was because he hadn’t been able to bring Huan with him for the visit; the hound was by far the cooler head of the two of them, and would have forestalled at least three of the arrests.

Each time, Constable Azaghâl Broadbeam greeted Maedhros at the station with a stoicism that seemed utterly impenetrable but for a hint of some other expression in his eyes. Most of the time Maedhros was fairly certain it was exasperation, but every once in a while he caught himself wondering if it mightn’t have been amusement.

In any case, it was with some relief that Maedhros went to retrieve his errant brother on the last evening before Celegorm’s departure back to London, and thence to St. Francis. With any luck he would have no time to get arrested again before his train.

“See you next time, constable,” said Celegorm blithely as Maedhros extracted him from the now all-too-familiar cell. 

“I very much hope this is the last I shall be seeing of you, young Mr. Gates,” Constable Broadbeam admonished him, though with more resignation than real censure.

“Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it,” Celegorm responded with a cheeky grin. “Cheerio!” Behind him, Maedhros shared a long-suffering glance with Constable Broadbeam, realising to his surprise that for a moment he and the policeman understood one another perfectly. 

It was perhaps because of that moment of unexpected fellow-feeling that Maedhros returned to the police station the next day, having made a quick stop at Erestor’s rooms on his way back from the train station.

“I haven’t got your brother,” the constable said, not bothering with a greeting. 

“Oh, no, I just put him on a train to London,” Maedhros answered, unable to hold back a grin at Broadbeam’s undisguised relief. “It’s just that I know he’s, well, rather a lot to handle, and you’ve been remarkably decent about all of it, so… call this a token of gratitude, if you will.” And he pulled from within his coat the bottle of Irish whiskey he’d nicked from Erestor’s cabinet.

Broadbeam’s eyes narrowed, then widened comically. “That’s never a —”

“Roe, fifteen year, and yes, it is.”

“Where did you get it? They don’t sell that stuff locally. It must have been terribly expensive!”

“Let’s just say I have a well-supplied friend who happened to owe me a favor.” After this he’d call it square with Erestor for abandoning him and Fingon to the tender mercies of a gaol cell the previous term. “Just be glad I didn’t pick the Green Dragon.”

“Green Dragon?”

“That’s what this particular friend gave me to drink the night I tried to steal your helmet. Some sort of terrifying absinthe-and-chilli-pepper brew.”

The constable looked both amused and alarmed. “I’ll stick with the whiskey, thanks all the same,” he chuckled, then let out a wistful sigh. “But we can’t take gifts or bribes, you know.” The doleful longing with which he was gazing at the bottle, rather reminiscent of the look in Huan’s eyes whenever he was banished to the corner of the dining room during family meals, belied his words.

“This isn’t meant as a bribe at all! I must be absolutely clear, I do not expect any leniency should you encounter myself or any of my brothers or cousins in the course of your duties. Though I very much hope you don’t.”

“We’re also not supposed to imbibe on duty.”

Maedhros considered. “What about sharing a libation or two with a friend, once you’re off?”

Constable Broadbeam slowly grinned. “I can’t see why that wouldn’t be permitted.”

§

“I must say, it’s a blessing having a friend who isn’t a student,” Fingon remarked. “He does a much better job keeping you sane in the run-up to exams than any of the rest of us, given that we are all also going swiftly mad from the pressure.” He, Maedhros, Erestor, and Constable Broadbeam were gathered at the pub in what had become a near-weekly ritual as the winter wore on.

“You needn’t worry about your exams,” Maedhros retorted. “Everyone knows first-year exams don’t count for anything. But mine will dictate whether I’ll be called to the bar at all.”

Fingon and Erestor both snorted into their drinks. “As if you’re in any danger. Tell him he’s making a dragon out of a dunghill, constable, I know for a fact he’s already being courted by four of the best London firms.”

“I’m off duty, call me Azaghâl,” the constable replied. He turned to Maedhros. “That where you’re going next then, London?”

“That’s the idea. Can’t go if I haven’t got a job, though, can I?” He had in fact been more or less assured by one of the partners at Prentis, Prentis & Prentis that he’d have an offer there if he wanted one, barring unforeseen circumstances like death or natural disaster. But then, neither of those was quite out of the realm of possibility, he thought grimly; it had after all happened to Pompeii. And quite honestly death by volcano was starting to look like an attractive prospect compared to sitting his exams...

“Stop fishing for compliments, Maedhros. Fingon’s right. You’re not in any danger,” Erestor said, bumping his shoulder good-naturedly.

“I might be back in London myself, in a year or two,” Azaghâl said contemplatively.

“Really? Don’t you like Oxford?”

“Oh, I like it well enough, but I got my start with the Metropolitan. Joined up because it seemed a sight better than the docks, and that was more or less the only other option for a keen young man in Poplar.”

“Poplar?” said Erestor, in surprise. “I’d never have guessed you were from Poplar.”

Azaghâl gave him a level stare. “Had to change my accent, didn’t I, once I moved up to Oxford, if I was going to be arresting toffs like you lot.” 

Erestor reddened. “I’m not a toff.”

“That’s exactly what a toff would say,” Maedhros informed him, rolling his eyes. Azaghâl and Fingon laughed as Erestor spluttered into his drink.

“I only came here because my uncle was in the first batch of policemen who moved here to start up this office, and once they’d got it established he asked if I wanted to join him,” Azaghâl went on. “But all the rest of my family’s scattered round the East End.”

“Do you have a lot of family, then?”

“Just a sister, and my old mum. But heaps of cousins.” He flashed a grin at Maedhros, who chuckled in sympathy. 

“An affliction we share,” he acknowledged, and quickly leaned back to dodge Fingon’s mock-outraged poke at his ribs. 

Azaghâl shook his head, indulgent. “So will I see you arguing before a distinguished London court, then?”

“I expect that’s pretty unlikely,” Maedhros mused. “None of the firms I’ve spoken with really do much criminal work, it’s more breach of contract, settling estates, that sort of thing. So we’re not really before the courts at the same time as the police are. And they certainly wouldn’t give an in-court argument to someone just out of university, even after I’m called to the bar — if I am, that is. I expect my first few years will be spent assisting senior barristers.” 

“We’ll have to find some other way to keep in touch, then. I very much doubt you’ll end up back in my cells.”

Maedhros smiled. “I’ll leave that to my heaps of cousins.”


	3. Chapter 3

He was ensconced at his desk, squaring off against the mountain of documents he was supposed to read, sort, and summarise for Mr. Haverford Prentis (the second Prentis of Prentis, Prentis & Prentis) when Mr. Haverford Prentis’ office assistant stuck his head through the doorway. “Mr. Gates?”

Maedhros looked up inquiringly. 

“Sorry to bother you, sir, only we’ve just had a message from the police station down the road asking for you.”

“For me? Whatever for?”

“Apparently they’ve got someone in custody there who says he needs an attorney. He specifically sent for you.”

“Did he give a name?” Maedhros ran through the catalogue of his younger relatives currently in London and likely to be in some sort of trouble, and came up blank. The twins were in town, but they were under his parents’ supervision and in any case would almost certainly lack the sense to ask for an attorney if they were arrested. Finrod was visiting as well, but aside from a memorable incident at the zoo when he was a boy he had stayed scrupulously out of trouble, mainly because of his ability to charm his way free when he got into it. Maglor was performing in Strasbourg, Fingon was up at Oxford, Celegorm and Aredhel had gone for a hunting holiday with the Duke of Kilhenny, and the younger ones were safely off at boarding school. That left only —

“Turgon Gates, sir.”

Who was, by Maedhros’ estimation, the _least_ likely of his relatives to run afoul of the law. He frowned. The stack of documents would have to wait. “I’ll go down and see what’s happened. If Mr. Prentis asks for me tell him I’ll be back straightaway.”

The picture that greeted him in the first cell at the local Metropolitan Police station was one of abject misery: Turgon, slumped on a low bench, head drooping forwards and face in his hands, looking more like a condemned traitor in the Tower of London facing imminent beheading at the behest of a wrathful Tudor than an impeccably modern young man in an impeccably modern gaol. At Maedhros’ “Hello, cousin,” he looked up in surprise. Maedhros was almost impressed to see that his face had actually gone — there was no other word for it — haggard. Turgon couldn’t have been sitting in the cell for more than half an hour.

“What on earth landed you in here?”

“It’s all a terrible misunderstanding,” he explained, woeful. “I feel absolutely awful about it. I was at an hotel having lunch, reading the latest Charles Booth manuscript — he’s mostly known for his shipping business, of course, but he’s done some _fascinating_ research into urban poverty — and I had a flash of insight about how we really ought to be planning cities that I absolutely had to write down. Only I’d bally gone and left my notebook at home. So I dashed out, and I completely forgot to settle my bill!”

“But surely you could simply have gone back and paid it, once you remembered.”

“I did! Or, well, I tried, but the _maître d’_ was absolutely furious. He’d called the police at once. He wants to press charges.” He said this with the same horror with which he might have said ‘He wants me broken on the wheel’ or ‘He wants to spill ink all over my architecture notebooks.’

Maedhros hoped Turgon had not seen his lips twitch. “What was the insight you had about city planning?”

“That’s the worst part!” Turgon groaned. “I’ve forgotten!”

“Alright, wait here,” he said, giving his cousin a smile that he was fairly sure came across as sympathetic rather than teasing. Turgon’s only answer was a pointed look at the firmly barred cell door standing between him and any possibility of waiting elsewhere. “I’ll go see if I can’t sort it out.”

Returning to the front of the station, he eyed the constable on duty at the desk. Unfortunately, he looked like the sort of plodding, by-the-book fellow who would be both unwilling and unable to provide meaningful assistance. Fortunately, Maedhros had a better ally in mind. 

“Excuse me,” he said politely, “might I have a word with your sergeant?”

“Sergeant Broadbeam?” The constable frowned, looking doubtful. “He’s quite busy at the moment.”

Maedhros gave him the smile he’d inherited from his mother, the one she used when his father was being particularly irrational, which said: _Your capacity for idiocy is no match for my capacity for obstinacy, Fëanor, and this war of attrition is not one you will win._ “I’ll wait,” he said smoothly, and sat down, folding his arms with ostentatious patience.

It was a matter of minutes before Azaghâl emerged from the door leading to the back offices. “Maedhros. Been a while since I’ve seen you in a work capacity.”

Maedhros followed him, waiting until they were safely settled in his office to respond. “Not that I wouldn’t rather be seeing you in a social context, Az, but I’m afraid you’ve got another of my cousins in your cells at the moment.”

“Ah, yes. The young Mr. Turgon Gates. Claims it was an honest mistake and he would have gone back to pay his bill right away.”

“I know they all say that, but in Turgon’s case it’s actually true. He’s the most painfully upstanding relative I have, with the possible exception of my Aunt Findis. Isn’t there anything you can do? You know I wouldn’t ask, normally. Frankly most of my relatives who turn up here have more than earned whatever consequences you see fit to dish out. But Turgon really would have paid; he probably will now if you tell him to.”

Azaghâl looked uncomfortable. “It’s not that I don’t believe him, or you, Maedhros. But I’ve got a very irate restaurant manager on my hands, who between you and me has been worse to deal with than most of the actual criminals I catch, and he’s insisting on pressing charges.”

“Perhaps I could talk to him?” 

Azaghâl gave him a long and dubious look before shrugging. “Don’t see how it’d help, but you can’t make things any worse, I suppose. It’s your funeral.” He gestured Maedhros toward the waiting room a few doors down from his office.

Maedhros emerged some minutes later with the _maître d’_ in tow, red-faced and mutinous, his mustache — which rivalled Uncle Fingolfin’s — quivering, but grudgingly willing to accept Turgon’s payment for the meal. 

“What the devil did you say to him?” Azaghâl asked, as he, Turgon, and Maedhros watched the _maître d’_ depart the station.

Maedhros shook his head. “It turned out the prospect of having my father design new lighting fixtures for his restaurant was more valuable than the chance to see you prosecuted, Turgon.”

His cousin looked at him in surprise. “Your father would agree to that?”

“Well, I’m not exactly going to tell him it’s a favour to one of _your_ father’s sons, am I?” Maedhros retorted, dry. “They just put in new lights at the Metropole that he thinks are absolutely awful, to the point where he refused to dine there when Granddad invited him. I’ll present this as an opportunity for him to show them how it ought to be done.”

Turgon looked mildly impressed, and Azaghâl snorted. “You are, and I mean this in the most complimentary sense, quite a conniving devil.”

Maedhros grinned at him, thinking of a red wig and a bobby’s helmet on a statue in a library courtyard. “I learned from the best.”

§

Mercifully, for the next few weeks his siblings and cousins managed to avoid the sort of trouble that would land them in the Metropolitan’s cells, or at least managed to avoid getting caught. Azaghâl, meanwhile, got promoted to head up an office elsewhere in the city, so Maedhros saw little of his friend for nearly a month. He saw little of anyone, in fact, apart from his colleagues, because shortly after Turgon’s short-lived stint as a hardened criminal, Mr. Albert Thurmond Prentis (son and successor of the first Prentis of Prentis, Prentis & Prentis) had assigned Maedhros his first in-court argument. The assignment plunged him into a weeks-long spiral of panic and overwork, and might have given him a breakdown had it not been for Fingon, who turned up from Oxford with no warning whatsoever and tickets to the sort of East End revue his mother would be scandalised to know he was attending.

“You’re taking the evening off,” he announced.

“I can’t, I’ve got to get through the rest of this by Thursday.” Maedhros looked helplessly at the stacks of case reporters piled on either side of his desk. “I can’t go before the judge unprepared.”

Fingon’s sympathetic gaze took in his rumpled sleeves, bloodshot eyes, and inkstained fingertips. “Be honest, you’re not going to retain anything in this state. You’re exhausted. Your dark circles have circles. I look into your eyes and all I see are little rows of ‘ _res ipsa loquitur_ ’s and ‘ _obiter dicta_ ’s dancing back and forth.”

“‘ _Obiter dicta_ ’ is already plural, you don’t need to add the ‘s’. And _res ipsa loquitur_ has nothing to do with this case.”

Fingon cuffed him lightly upside the head. “That sort of pedantry is precisely why you need to get out of here. Come on, all this will still be waiting for you tomorrow, and anyhow if I know you at all, you memorised everything the judge could possibly think to ask sometime last week.”

“But —”

“Or I’ll write your mother that you’ve been working too hard. _And_ Granny, see if I don’t.” 

He would, too, Maedhros knew, and had a sudden vision of Indis descending on every Prentis in London and possibly also the judge in tastefully perfumed, scrupulously courteous, and utterly relentless concern. He swallowed hard and allowed himself to be dragged from his office and out into a waiting cab. 

“I almost got us tickets for the Savoy instead,” Fingon told him cheerily as they trundled along rapidly darkening streets, “but for one thing, it’s close enough to your office that I couldn’t trust you not to dash back at intermission, and for another, I can’t watch Gilbert and Sullivan without getting the feeling that I’m the one being skewered.”

Maedhros smiled, realising it was the first time in weeks he had done so. Fingon’s company and the prospect of even a few hours where he didn’t have to think about vicarious liability were doing a great deal to lighten his spirits. “That’s because you are.” 

“So are you, then,” said Fingon. “But I think this show will have chosen better subjects for satire.”

It had. Maedhros recognized the music for the opening act as soon as the first notes sounded.

“That’s one of Maglor’s!” he hissed, leaning to whisper in Fingon’s ear. The singer, who sported a towering wig, an elaborate ball-gown, and a faint hint of stubble beneath an excess of rouge, gave him a coquettish wink and launched into the first verse. Maedhros sank down in his seat in mortification. “Those definitely aren’t Maglor’s lyrics, though.”

Fingon was doubled over laughing. “Do you know, I think I prefer this version. What a magnificent vocal range! That squeaky soprano they’ve got doing his stuff in the West End ought to retire.” 

“You knew!” Maedhros accused him. “You knew this was on the programme!”

“Serves a dual purpose, doesn’t it? You get a night off, and I get material on your brother for his next visit home.”

Maedhros paused as the singer navigated a particularly complicated bit of coloratura, and then, unsure whether to be impressed or appalled, said faintly, “I think the lyrics might actually be Celegorm’s.” Or perhaps Celegorm had gotten them here, in which case he was going to have to start monitoring his younger brother’s visits to London much more closely.

Still, almost despite himself, he enjoyed the evening, and stumbled out of the theatre afterward feeling almost lightheaded with music, laughter, and possibly the drinks Fingon had ordered them at intermission. They were nearly to the street corner when, over the general chatter of the other theatre-goers dispersing, he heard something odd. 

“Wait.” He laid a hand on Fingon’s arm. 

“What is it?” Fingon tilted his head, listening closely, and then his eyes widened as he heard it too: shouting, punctuated by some very solid-sounding thumps and muffled cries of pain.

Maedhros steered them back toward the theatre, this time to the stage door at the rear, where it took him only a moment to parse the scene before him. The singer from the opening act, whose wig had been knocked askew and costume torn, had been cornered by half a dozen rough-looking men. Two of them had the singer in a painful-looking grip, indifferent to their captive’s virtuosic stream of curses. The remaining four were laying into a policeman who had evidently stepped in to break up the scuffle and who, though he was plying a truncheon with some skill, was badly outnumbered and getting rather the worst of it.

Maedhros recognized the policeman’s familiar bushy beard just as Fingon cried out, “Hang on, that’s Az!” Had he not been sleep-deprived and slightly drunk, he might have paused to strategise a more considered approach to the situation, but as it was he simply rolled up his sleeves and waded in, tearing the nearest attacker off Azaghâl and punching him in the chin. He was only vaguely conscious of Fingon at his side, ramming an elbow into another assailant. Their arrival served to even the odds, though Maedhros caught an unlucky blow to the face; Azaghâl seemed to catch his second wind, and the singer took advantage of the distraction to wrench both arms free, tear the rings from one elegant hand, and deliver a formidable but decidedly inelegant left hook to the jaw of one of the ruffians. 

After that it took the four of them only a few minutes to see their attackers off, all but the victim of the singer’s left hook, who had gone down like a felled tree. Azaghâl prodded the unconscious man with a booted foot in disgust. “S’pose I’ll have to cart this one up to the station.” He looked up at Maedhros and Fingon. “No complaints about your timing, and I’m very grateful, I’m sure, but what the devil are you doing here?”

“We were attending the show,” Fingon said.

“Ah yes, I saw you two in the audience,” the singer said, pausing in what looked like a futile attempt to rescue the damaged wig in order to bat ludicrously long eyelashes at him. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends, Az?”

“Right, er, sorry. These are some friends of mine from my stint in Oxford, Maedhros and Fingon Gates. Lads, this is my cousin Michâl.”

Michâl proffered a delicate hand, bruised knuckles notwithstanding, and Maedhros, bemused, kissed the back of it. “You never said any of your cousins were... in the theatre,” he remarked to Azaghâl, straightening up. 

“Az kept telling all of us the bobby’s life was the best choice for anyone who didn’t take to the docks, which, let me assure you, I _very_ much didn’t. But as I didn’t take to police work either, I set out to prove him wrong,” Michâl explained breezily. “And here we are!”

“Here we are,” Azaghâl grumbled, “I keep telling you, you’d have an easier time of it if you took off your costume _before_ leaving the theatre.”

Michâl waved off the comment. “Your mistake, cousin dearest, lies in assuming this is a costume, and not simply my preferred accoutrements.”

“That’s all very well, but things have been getting worse, haven’t they,” countered Azaghâl. “That lot weren’t the usual drunkards out for lark at some poor sod’s expense. Someone’s been organising them into proper gangs.”

“And yet we prevailed,” Michâl pointed out, turning a beaming smile upon Maedhros and Fingon, “with the help of our fortuitously punctual allies. Quite frankly I thought that a most diverting finale to the night, though poor Paulette will be despondent about this wig. Come on, let’s all go have a drink at my place.”

“I can’t, I’ve got to get him up to the station,” Azaghâl said glumly, prodding again at the prone ruffian. He looked up at Maedhros. “And you ought to put something on that eye, it’ll be quite a shiner by morning.”

Maedhros felt the euphoria of victory abruptly abandon him like air from a punctured balloon. He turned to Fingon in horror. “Have I really got a black eye?”

Fingon squinted at him through the play of gaslight and shadow, and nodded, apologetic.

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken the night off! I’m due in court Thursday! I can’t argue before the judge looking like I’ve come off worse in a pub brawl!”

Fingon leaned over to inspect his face more closely, and winced. “It mightn’t be quite that bad,” he said, with transparent falsity.

“Oh, heavens, no, it’s terrible,” Michâl said at once. “So what a stroke of luck that you’ve got a friend with a cousin in the theatre!”

§

Maedhros delivered his argument painted, powdered, and caked within what felt like an inch of his life; but Michâl’s artistry and his own preparation stood him in good stead, for the decision that eventually came down from the bench was favourable. Azaghâl insisted on taking him for drinks to celebrate — “It’s a momentous occasion! Come a long way from pinching helmets at Oxford, haven’t you? And anyhow, I owe you one!” — and as both Michâl and Fingon were invited, word somehow got around to Azaghâl’s cousins, while Fingon decided that as many of Maedhros’ own cousins and Oxford friends as were in London and of age should be pressed into service. The party that eventually descended on Azaghâl’s favourite pub numbered nearly two dozen.

The barkeep received them with impressive stoicism and only the faintest flash of terror in his eyes. Maedhros very quickly became more inebriated than he had planned: relatives, friends, and strangers kept insisting on buying him drinks in honour of ‘the mighty blow you struck for justice, old chap’, despite his protestations that his argument had in fact concerned an obscure contractual dispute between two equally distasteful partners in a dubious business venture. The cacophony around him swelled; to his right, Finrod appeared to be caught up in a debate on hairdressing techniques with some of Michâl’s theatre friends, while a bit to his left Erestor was gesticulating about ancient Roman plumbing systems to Turgon, who looked alarmed yet unexpectedly fascinated.

“Dunnington!” roared Azaghâl in delight, spotting Celegorm attempting to shove his way through the door. Celegorm looked up in surprise, then promptly dropped the bit of rope he was holding and pushed the rest of the way through, throwing his arms around Azaghâl and nearly lifting him off his feet. 

“Broadbeam!”

“You _cannot_ bring a dog in here,” the barkeep groaned. Huan, attached to the other end of Celegorm’s discarded rope, cast him an injured look, whuffed, and made a dash for the kitchens with surprising agility for a creature so large.

By the time the ensuing mayhem subsided, Maedhros found himself squashed into a corner next to Azaghâl, who seemed to have been rendered maudlin by drink. “I shall miss all of this,” he said, in tones more suited to a wake than a Whitechapel pub. 

“Why? You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Maedhros asked in surprise. 

Azaghâl nodded. “Should’ve mentioned before. I have decided,” he paused, for dramatic effect or possibly to suppress a hiccup, “to emigrate.”

“What?”

“To Phid– Philaph– Philadelphia.”

“ _What?_ But you’ve only just been promoted here!”

“Ah, Poplar in’t what it used to be. And my uncle’s over there now, says there’s always a need for good ossif– offishers if they can get them. Don’t worry, I won’t be leaving for a few months yet.”

“But I may never see you again,” Maedhros said, feeling rather maudlin himself.

“Who knows, you might find yourself in America someday.”

Maedhros shook his head. “I very much doubt that.” They stared mournfully into their drinks for a few minutes, and then Azaghâl jolted up with a start. 

“I almost forgot!” He clambered onto the nearest table, impressively steady on his feet, and bellowed, “Oi!” 

Everyone else continued with their conversations, oblivious. Azaghâl tried again. “ _Oi!_ ”

This time, a few people fell quiet, noticed him, and began nudging their neighbors. When he felt he had enough people’s attention, Azaghâl began, “Now you may all think we’re here to celebrate my very good friend Mr. Wimble– Gates here, for winning his very firsht argument in court.”

Maedhros put his head down in his arms.

“Not so! I say, not so! For you see, this is _not_ his firsht argument. I was _there_ for his firsht argument! And I have a gift for him, in honour of that day.” He looked at Maedhros, who with great apprehension looked up at him. “We were enemiesh, then, sonny boy, but we’re friends now, aren’t we. So I present to you —” he paused, and looked around in consternation. “Has anyone seen a hatbox?”

“Oh, sorry,” said Celegorm from somewhere near the bar. “I think I might have sat on it.” He passed forward a rather squashed, mint-green-and-white-striped hatbox covered in paper flowers, which Azaghâl presented, with great ceremony, to Maedhros.

“A memento.”

Everyone applauded. Expecting the worst, Maedhros opened it. 

Inside lay a policeman’s helmet, slightly dented and with a fraying chinstrap.

“Az…” He pulled out the helmet, and turned it over in his hands, abruptly feeling his chest go tight. It was exactly as he remembered it — almost. He squinted at the crude figure etched into metal, apparently by pocket-knife or similar implement. “Is — is that a dog?”

Azaghâl dropped down to sit on the table. “A dog? A _dog_? You blithering ingrate, that’sh a dragon!”

“In honour of the spirit that precipitated the encounter,” put in Erestor, popping up as if by magic behind Maedhros’ shoulder. “I suggested it.”

“Ah, yes, I see it now,” Maedhros said hastily. 

“Well? Put it on!”

He did so; it settled a full inch past his eyes. “I think your head’s bigger than mine, Az,” he said, tinnily, from within. 

“Only take a few more years in the law to mend that,” Azaghâl told him, clapping him on the shoulder.

Maedhros extricated his head from the helmet. “I shall treasure it,” he said solemnly. 

Which of course meant that fifteen minutes later Fingon, Michâl, Finrod, and Celegorm were cheering him on as he tilted the helmet back, draining the beer within it in a single go.

He emerged rather winded, his upper lip flecked with foam, and shoved the helmet at Fingon.

Fingon turned it over in his hands. “Is that a deer?”

“A dragon,” Maedhros informed him. “Come on, your turn now, since you dared me. Fill it up, whatever you can't finish goes on your head.”

“Those are the rules,” Michâl confirmed, meeting Fingon's mute appeal with a complete absence of sympathy. “And you get the next round.”

Maedhros lifted his own glass. Across the room, Azaghâl lifted his. “To defeating dragons,” he called.

“To friendship,” Maedhros answered, and together, they drank.


End file.
